Egghead: Or, You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone

by Bo Burnham

How, may I ask, did you get so you, you beautiful true-to-you doer? I’ve met many today but can honestly say that I’ve never met anyone you-er.

You’re incomparable like a… Shit. Like a…

I attempt to dance and become a tornado of elbow.

What about that poor ol’ disembodied head’s poor ol’ disemheaded body?

Coupons! Sales! Deals! Bargains! Free stuff! Steals! Buy five marked up, get one half price! Buy two of one thing and get one thing twice! Earn customer points when you shop at our store! Redeem customer points to shop here some more!

Homonyms aren’t fare. It’s awful. It’s tragic. I say I’m pulling out my hare and they think I’m talking magic.

Although there’s many different brains, with different stories, different names, different isn’t safe like same, so same makes most take safer aim. Who needs those same old, same old fakes? Today, that same old, lame mold breaks. I’m me! I’m me! Meet me and see what a difference difference makes!

“Touch me back,” you said, like a pirate talking to a masseuse. “Right away, Captain,” I replied, forgetting that you couldn’t hear that connection that I made in my head.

You’re afraid of sharks? Really? They don’t even have bones! They have cartilage. Are you afraid of ears too?

Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, hollow be thy promises and shallow be thy shame.

“Well, man, you know what they say.” No, I don’t. I don’t know what they say. I don’t even know who they are. Who is this they? They seem pretty smug. They seem to think they know shit. Fuck them.

This is a fine form to make a prepositional proposition in. The proposition is this: prepositions are fine to end a sentence with.

Hey, fireflies! Fly higher, guys! Fly high above this place. Till a sky rise is a wire’s size. Then fly off into space. I catch stupid bugs in jars but you’re not bugs you’re baby stars!

I don’t want to stay but I know I can’t leave it. I needed to tell you but please don’t reread it. I hope this sounds silly and you can’t conceive it, because you’re here the second you believe it.

I love you just the way you are but you don’t see you like I do. You shouldn’t try so hard to be perfect. Trust me, perfect should try to be you.

No matter our race or color or creed or way of life or species or breed. No matter our height or girth or scent, we all hate Donald because Donald is a fucking dick.

Bit ironic, right? Or is that not ironic? I read somewhere that, like, anything funny is, in some way, ironic. But I don’t know if it’s funny or not. I don’t think my brain owns “funny,” you know?

Are you terrified, as I am, of nothing? Nothing scares me more than nothing.

Me, with my strange choice of adjectives. You, with your muscular teeth and clockwise vagina.

A priest, a rabbi, and a horse walk into a bar. The bar bursts into flames. The horse escapes, only to drown in a lake later that night. As for the priest and the rabbi? Turns out they were just two other horses. My mistake.

My first draft got a B+, so I made one small revision. I got the paper back. What the fuck’s an F÷?

I feel strange. Half light-hearted, half heavy-handed.

Little Ashley hung magazine spreads on her wall, after picking the magazines out in the mall. Models and actresses, singers and more, with cleavage and makeup and glamour galore! All of her heroes were finally nearer. Her whole room looked perfect—except for the mirror.

Pigs are smarter than dogs. I love my dog. I also love eating bacon. So I can stop eating bacon or I can continue playing a quiet and aggressive role in the genocide of a species whose intelligence sits safely in the middle of my “worthy of real love” spectrum. Or I can continue eating bacon and admit that my love for my dog is a sham, a hollow and meaningless relationship born of my own insecurities and years of confirmation bias. He likes me because I feed him. That’s it. Fuck him. Bacon is delicious.

Even if I had seen some struggle on you, somewhere, I would have mistook it for simple social rigmarole as everyone’s behavior reeked of performance.

I don’t expect to change your mind with one conversation, only to chip away at it, like a woodpecker on a redwood tree.

What a perfect day to be gone and forgotten. What a wonderful day to be dead. Six feet above me, the world’s gone rotten while I’m rottin’ in a coffin instead. You’ll die one day and that day could be any one of the thousands ahead, but I can guarantee that that day will be a wonderful day to be dead.

Hey, look! It’s the Youth. The Youth is fighting the Man. How cute. Get him, Youth! Get him! Yikes, that was quick. You’ll get him next time!

I’m old and cold and out of time, thirteen years far past my prime. Weary legs from life’s steep climb, I can barely walk let alone think of a fourth word.

I’ve never found the incomprehensible quite this boring. All that talk about life and I got a cheap magic trick.

Let’s fuck in the woods, sweetheart. Wood to wood, ass to grass, hands clasped, limbs grasped, humping parts while nature sways, licking butts where reindeer graze. Let’s toil, uncoiled, in the soil, soiled. Broiled in baby oil (tree sap’s foil). Let’s flirt with the earth, with rubber to avert birth and darkness to assert girth, no shirt or skirt, just squirting in dirt. Let’s fuck in the woods.

A dozen eyes found me at once—a security measure meant to bring shame to a klutz breaking his social contract. Attention for shit living.

He’s talking in the third person again. Look at him, talking to himself, about himself, as if he’s talking to someone else about someone else. He’s about to speak. “Hey! You!” Wait, he can’t do that. He can’t address “him” as “you.” He is “him.” “HEY! YOU!” Wait a second… yes?